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In his 10th season as the men’s basketball coach at Notre Dame, Mike Brey finds himself in a situation similar to almost all of his predecessors since 1950: He made the Irish good enough to sort of become a victim of his own success.
Including yesterday’s victory over a South Florida team that had won four straight conference games (including versus ranked foes Pitt and Georgetown), Brey’s career league record in maybe America’s most cutthroat conference is 94-65 for a .591 winning percentage.
A .590 winning percentage for Notre Dame basketball over 10 years in the Big East is akin to a major league baseball franchise playing .590 ball. That’s how competitive it is in this 16-team conference. Think about it — even the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox with their incredible payroll would take a 95-67 (.586) regular season just about any season.
One Hall of Fame coach in the Big East, Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun, is .642 in his Big East career (not including when he is sidelined with health ailments), and another, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, is .646, including .594 the past five years. Over the last six years, Boeheim has won only two NCAA Tournament games, failed to make the Big Dance twice, and had a losing league record a third time. That is the crème-d-la-crème of coaching who are not bound by nearly as many restrictions, but they too don’t take a winning percentage over .600 for granted in the Big East.
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Brey has a .591 winning percentage through nearly ten seasons at Notre Dame.
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Last fall, former Irish head coach Lou Holtz stated that he recommends to any college coach to change schools after seven years — even to Urban Meyer. He has a theory about a “seven-year itch” in coaching among many followers where they get tired of the same quotes, the same system, the same face … and want to see change just to freshen up the situation.
I suspect that is why there is some unrest among some Irish faithful about the Irish men’s basketball team. You know what you’re going to get, and the inevitable question is, “Could they do any better with someone else?”
For whatever it’s worth, here is my take: I compare Notre Dame men’s basketball to Mississippi football (and South Carolina too, but more on that later).
If you look at Ole Miss football history, it has a nice, rich tradition, especially under head coach Johnny Vaught in the 1950s and 1960s when it regularly was a national top 10 outfit. It's also been a solid program for the last 15 years or so, winning several Cotton Bowls, flirting with the top 15-20 on occasion, and producing players such as Eli Manning, among many others. They've also had quality coaches such as David Cutcliffe (now at Duke) and Houston Nutt.
But there is a ceiling reality: Ole Miss will never consistently be what Alabama, LSU and maybe even Auburn are in the West division of the SEC, never mind Florida, Georgia and Tennessee in the East. They'll have their “moments” against all of them (like winning at Florida in 2008, the lone loss for the national champs), and other programs will be in down cycles when they don’t have a star coach in place (e.g. Alabama with Mike DuBose or Mike Shula, or Florida with Ron Zook). But when Mississippi is picked to be near the top, it's an uncomfortable role for them.
When I saw Ole Miss football ranked in the preseason top 5 in many circles last year, I immediately thought of Notre Dame basketball last season when it too was in most everyone's top 10 and in some top 5s (including Dick Vitale’s). Like Ole Miss in football, Notre Dame basketball is not comfortable with high expectations and prefers to be under the radar. Brey is a good, quality coach, similar to Cutcliffe and Nutt, and the right fit to the university’s mission. If you can't get along with Brey, then you're the one with the personality issue.
Similar to Ole Miss football, the ceiling reality for Notre Dame basketball in the Big East is it’s not going to be Syracuse, Georgetown, Villanova, Georgetown, UConn, Louisville etc. — unless those schools either don’t have the right coach in place (e.g., Craig Esherick at Georgetown) or the fire is gone from a great coach (e.g., Denny Crum in his final years at Louisville). The great athletes are not going to consistently matriculate here and the Hall of Fame-coach type won't take this job (I will admit Rick Majerus almost did in 2000, although he too was soon sidelined by health ailments). Rick Pitino sent his son to school here, but there is no way he would want to coach here (not that he would be hired now) with all the restrictions. You think West Virginia’s Bob Huggins would want to coach here?
It was a different era for Ole Miss football in the 1950s and 1960s, including segregation in the South. Likewise, in the 1970s most every advantage was in Notre Dame basketball’s favor, from national television demand to its independence status (25 teams were taken in the NCAA Tournament, no conference runners-up), to the absence of shady AAU coaches, etc. I cherished those days when both the Irish football and basketball programs were viable national title contenders, but the worm began to turn right at the end of the 1970s with the formation of the Big East and ESPN, among numerous other factors.
Like his predecessors, Brey has been good enough to not be fully appreciated (until years later).
• Moose Krause did well in the post-war years, but “fired myself” after the 1951 season when the Irish lost 11 of their last 20 games, thereby allowing him to concentrate on his duties as athletics director.
• Johnny Jordan (1951-64) three times led the Irish to the Elite 8 (1953, 1954 and 1958) with All-Americans such as Dick Rosenthal, Jack Stephens and Tom Hawkins, but awful facilities and stagnancy took over the program that ended up with a losing record in three of his final four seasons. Members of the student body even chanted “Jordan must go!” in one home game his final season. Two days after that incident, he announced his resignation.
• Johnny Dee (1964-71) began the amazing Washington D.C. pipeline in the mid-1960s with Austin Carr, Collis Jones, Bob Whitmore, Sid Catlett, and it would continue in the 1970s with Adrian Dantley, Duck Williams, Tracy Jackson, etc. Dee was a stellar recruiter but not really an Xs and Os strategist or motivator. The Irish were a top-20 regular his final three years — but popular opinion was he should have taken the Irish to a higher level with Carr & Co.
• Digger Phelps (1971-91) brought more fire and “schematics” to the program in the 1970s. But after the graduation of Kelly Tripucka, Orlando Woolridge and Jackson in 1981, the slide began. In Phelps’ final 12 seasons, Notre Dame won a total of five NCAA Tournament games. Brey has won four over nine seasons, so that’s a little above Phelps’ standard. In Phelps’ final season when the Irish lost 20 games (just like in his first year), his name was not even announced anymore in the pregame introductions because the booing at the mere mention of it became an embarrassment. Today, when he walks into the arena, he’s like Caesar hailed by the Romans. There was a home game against Duke when Phelps was booed lustily in the pregame intros while Blue Devils head coach Mike Krzyzewski (assisted by Brey) received a standing ovation from the student body — like that was going to lure Coach K here.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve formed the opinion that Sweet 16 is about as good as you can expect in Notre Dame men’s basketball. Now, that’s not to say you can’t catch lightning in a bottle one of these years and make a magical run in the NCAA Tournament. If George Mason could reach the Final Four, why not Notre Dame?
But let me put it this way: There have been 52 seasons of basketball since 1958. In four of them, ND won two NCAA tournament games (back to back): 1978, 1979, 1987 and 2003. That's one per 13 years of winning just two games.
Thus, where do we get this idea that Notre Dame is a basketball power in the genre of Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Kansas, UCLA, Duke, etc? Just because you're closing in on 1,700 all-time wins (against some padded schedules over history) doesn't do it.
Based on expectations forged over the years, the standard of a “great football season” at Notre Dame is a major bowl victory resulting in a top 5 finish, if not a national title.
Based on Notre Dame basketball history, what is the standard? From the results over the last 50-plus years, it appears to be: 1) an NCAA Tournament bid is like a Jan. 1 bowl bid in football; 2) one victory in the NCAA Tournament is like winning a January bowl game; 3) two victories in the tourney are like winning a BCS bowl game; 4) three victories in the tourney (achieved only once by the Irish in their history) is akin to a national title.
Look, I get it when some people say they’ve grown tired of Brey and the program seems to have hit a plateau. Brey also made some PR blunders last year by stating he was hoping to finish 9-9 in the league before the season began. That rubbed many the wrong way, including yours truly. And if the Irish miss the tourney this year, that would make it five in seven years, which would likely lead to a groundswell of discontent.
At the same time, I have also appreciated that Notre Dame is a good program under Brey, he’s done fine work keeping the program consistently competitive, and he’s often taken for granted. Given the current lay of the land, I'd give it about a 10 percent chance that anyone else could do appreciably better — or would want to even try.
I also appreciated what an amazing job both Pat Murphy and Paul Mainieri did with Notre Dame’s baseball program. The reality was they probably sensed there was at ceiling here, and the chances of reaching the Promised Land were much better at programs such as Arizona State and LSU.
To make another football analogy, it's like South Carolina on the gridiron. In the late 1990s, Holtz was able to take the Gamecocks to 8 and 9 wins and a couple of bowl wins — but many believed Steve Spurrier could take them to "the next level." He can't do any better. Those are two Hall of Fame figures who are about as good as it gets, but an SEC championship (never mind national title) is just not going to happen at South Carolina unless you catch that proverbial lightning.
I'd like to be wrong on this. I really would. But reality settled in with me about 15 years ago.
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